editing progress report; life update; thoughts on the pronunciation of visual labels

[edenfalling]

Have received beta responses for "Secrets" chapter 10. Thank you, lasultrix and aichmetes! (Also, Cat? I love you and you are insightful as always, but goddamn it, write larger. Or use post-it notes. Your handwriting is as bad as my grandmother's, and that's saying something.)

*beats head against desk*

I knew it wasn't a great chapter. It suffers from A) being a transitional chapter, with the strongest scene occuring midway (and connecting only tenuously to the chapter's overall theme), B) attempting to paper over some awkward and/or inexplicable bits of CoS, and C) being written piecemeal over approximately 7 months. I already edited the hell out of it, and now I have two opinions on what needs more editing. Which is good! Don't ever think it isn't! But it is such a pain to pick my words apart and stitch them back together, especially when we're talking 9,000+ words, which themselves must mesh with the 90,000+ words in chapters 1-9.

*beats head some more*

I will do my best to fix it up and post it sometime next week.

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What I did this week:

1. Wrote about 300 words of "Finding Marea"
2. Wrote about 500 words of "Guardian"
3. Finally got around to downloading and arranging bits of "Chrysanthe," an original story (modern-day fantasy, dark-ish) that I left as an attachment on an email message for about a year
4. Wrote another 400 words of "Chrysanthe"
5. Read chapters 1-30 of Hunter x Hunter

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Speaking of #5, how does one pronounce that title? Hunter 'versus' Hunter? Hunter 'ecks' Hunter? Hunter 'times' Hunter? Inquiring minds want to know.

On a related subject, inquiring minds also want to know how to pronounce pairing abbreviations in Gundam Wing fandom. 1+2 -- meaning friendship and/or kissing but no sex between Heero and Duo -- seems likely to be 'one plus two.' But 1x2... ah now, how to say that? 1 'times' 2? For some reason, I've ended up mentally saying that as 'one by two,' as if I'm talking about the dimensions of a plank of wood. Hey, we all have our mental quirks.

Anyway, is there a commonly accepted verbalization of that style of pairing notation? Since FF.net banned the / character in story summaries, I've seen 'x' as a pairing notation appear in a growing number of fandoms... at least in fandoms that don't use portmanteau ship names (like McShep for McKay/Sheppard, or NaruSasuSaku for Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura, etc.).

For that matter, do people commonly pronounce the / in pairing names? That is, would you say 'aitch slash aitch arr' for H/Hr? Or would you just say 'aitch aitch arr'? I don't (mentally) pronounce the / mark, but since I've only discussed ships online, and therefore in writing, I have no audio references.

Comments

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

ifthey mean hunter vs hunter they shoudl have used vs, ora narrow.
and indeedi either thought of'times' or'slash' (although when someone uses an x i actual ythin kof it as automaticall byeign r or nc-17 stuff whe hte / coudl be also lower.
as for pronounciatio nof pairings (and i have wondered for a logntiem whatthe 1+2 etc codes mean sincie also saw it insome hp fics on ff.net) I blieve when it's abbreviatedi mostly say jsuthe letters. i somtimes pronoucn ethe slash when i read whoel words but i' mnot sure. i know ifi talk to someone i remember once literal ysaign 'it's asirius dash james story) or something and icna't picture harry/hermione fiendship .the slash automatically makes me think of more.
i hae portmanteau. snupin. snack. snarry. i jsue maek four-letter pairs instead. adn dont' stat aboutthe 'ship names' like what wsa it...fire and ice *gulps*


another original story? did ou need yet antoher wip on yoru plate? its' agodo thign yo uan alternate betwen thigns and write 100-500 words o nsomethign differetn every day or hour.

[edenfalling]

Portmanteau can be done in different ways. In most fandoms, it's made by combining names into one word. In Naruto fandom, weirdly enough, the combination is made not by taking the start of one name and the end of the other, but by taking the first one or two syllables of both names, and capitalizing both.

So in, say, HP fandom, you take Snape and Lupin and make Snupin, but in Naruto fandom, you take (*grabs two names at random*) Shikamaru and Temari and make ShikaTem. Note that the 'T' in 'Tem' is capitalized, even though it's in the middle of the portmanteau ship name.

I like the Naruto portmanteau style better than the standard English-based fandom portmanteau style.

As for "Chrysanthe," it's not a new story. It's actually an old story that I started writing on somebody else's computer, and then emailed to myself. Then I forgot about it and left it floating around in the ether for nearly a year until I downloaded it last week.

[alliancesjr.livejournal.com]

There's also the old Pokémon style of shipping names that have been adopted by various other fandoms. Essentially, you take a pair, and use an aspect of that pairing to describe it.

For example, if we were to adopt Pokémon style to Naruto, a NaruIru pairing would become RamenShipping. Kakashi and Jiraiya would be either PervyShipping or IchaIchaShipping.

This style used to be all the rage with all fandoms, but the empty-headed fangirl/fanboy populace dropped it in favor of name combinations because this style required too much thought and effort.

[edenfalling]

I think I've seen that style used for some Yu-Gi-Oh pairings. It's fun and creative, but the downside is that you do need to be very familiar with the characters in question, and you have to make the same mental leap that the pairing name originator did. For someone just dipping her/his toes into a fandom, that's an extremely unhelpful notation style -- it almost seems designed to keep newcomers out of an exclusive inner circle.

[alliancesjr.livejournal.com]

From what I can remember, that was the original intent, as well. Fanfiction elitism. While I don't support that, I still find the notation style fun and imaginative.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

i liek that japanese portmanteau too. (not shikaTema? I thought yo usaid two sylables ffrom each name.)
HermiROn (because its' either one ortwo cylable for him.)
Hermisever. minervalbus. hargin. REMUSNYMPHA!! *gggles*
is downoloadable manga in graphic formats? i mean in some kidn of jpg or pdffile tha dosnt' have plai ntext bits? ialwas yfelt abit about it liek 'nto antoher packof superheros tgryig nto save t he world'.

[alliancesjr.livejournal.com]

Assuming you're still speaking of Naruto, I tend to use NarutoFan. You have to register, but it's free. Unless they've changed it in the last few months; I haven't been there in a while. Need to catch up.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

well it's mostly tha I m'blind .So if it's all in acarton way liek captioned images or no actual ocr text I cna't do anything wit hit.

[alliancesjr.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. Well, there's also text translations. I'm pretty sure that they're on NarutoFan as well, but I don't know how good they are, or how descriptive they are. There are also some sites out there with episode (and chapter, for the manga) summaries, with varying amounts of description. I can start searching later tonight when I get home, if you like.

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

ooh thanks! I havea nextra day off this weekendso i'll chek that site out.
speakign of texttranscripts..do you happenedto know where I can find trasncritps liek that for other comicbooks/graphic novels?I tried to google but i got sentencesthat contain all those words but I'm also scaredto plunge into a site that is full of nonsensical adds adn other weirdstuff.
hey. perhaps i'l lendup readign manga this way after all lol.